


Though the Heavens Fall [Avatar AU Part I]

by Trelan



Series: Avatar AU [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Gen, avatar AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:52:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trelan/pseuds/Trelan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instability in the Spirit World has triggered a zombie apocalypse, and the Avatar is missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though the Heavens Fall [Avatar AU Part I]

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Kas, Emma, the-kind-of-in-the-fandom-by-proxy-but-not-really-because-she’s-stubborn Kaitlyn, and anyone else who helped me with this that I may have forgotten because I’m a terribly forgetful person. This is the first time I've ever used AO3 and also the first fandom-related thing I've written in years, sooooo hopefully I didn't screw up too terribly. ;D

Runner Five pulls back the heavy canvas tent flap, stepping slowly into the lantern-lit makeshift hospital and scanning through the sea of files and miscellaneous medical supplies. Five knows there has to be some sort of order to the chaos, but to her untrained eye everything looks to be a bit of a disaster zone. Stepping past the threshold of the tent, she nearly trips over one of several large water basins that had been strewn throughout the room.

"Dr. Myers?" she calls out once she's managed to balance herself again, glancing to her left and then her right when she notices movement out of her periphery. Maxine appears from behind what Five had assumed to be a cubicle curtain, though it wasn't really much more than a few large, dingy sheets pinned up around a rickety cot. Abel was getting by, sure, but it wasn't any Beifong mansion by any stretch of the imagination.

"Hey there, Five. I'm just finishing up some paperwork. Here for a bite check?"

The runner nods, smiling faintly as she shrugs off of her backpack and props it against the side of the tent, draping her jacket over it.

"Any problems? Injuries?" Maxine asks as she moves to grab a runner's log from her desk and begins scribbling hurriedly on the page.

"Well..." Five draws out as she pulls up the edge of her leggings to reveal a nasty, deep purple bruise forming in the middle of her shin. "Kind of. I bashed my leg on a hunk of metal. Nothing too serious, though."

"Yikes."

The doctor moves to grab the edge of one of the water basins, sliding it across the ground towards a cot that she simultaneously motions Five to sit on. Gesturing gracefully with her hands, she draws out a portion of the water and pushes it in Five's direction. When the liquid makes contact with the runner's skin, it glows dimly and ever so slowly begins leeching the aching and throbbing out of the damaged tissue. Five sighs and flops back on the cot, which creaks loudly in protest.

"Rough mission today, huh? Anything interesting?"

"I uh...nothing really." Five considers how to summarize her day without potentially offending the doctor. Sure, Maxine seemed nice enough. Trustworthy. But she could also be friends with the wrong people. "Just keeping some of the zoms occupied while they repaired one of the outer walls. Met Runner Eight today too. Sarah, right? Apparently she's my new running buddy."

The doctor nods, smirking slightly as she lets the water cascade back into the basin. "Yeah, she was in here earlier and mentioned that. I know she can be a little...abrasive sometimes. Just don’t take it too personally."

Mhmm. “Abrasive.” “Homicidal” and “unstable” seemed to be more fitting descriptions at this point. Five thinks back to the day's events. She recalled the run she had made with Eight to the wreckage sight of the Mullin's zepplin. Sarah had managed to recover Five's identification, the emblazoned White Lotus seal glinting in the sun and throwing light on her face as she had examined it scrupulously. She also recalled the thinly veiled threat Runner Eight had made a few minutes prior to this discovery to choke her with her own runner dog tags. Five could still swear she felt the chain tug ever so slightly around her neck whenever Sarah had spoken to her from that point on, even with the new information about her identity. Metalbenders, man. They’re a tough crowd.

"Yep. She's a little intense." Understatement.

“Listen,” Dr. Myers begins, averting her eyes from Five as she stares intently at the runner’s log, tapping her pen on her knee. “I’m not really sure I was supposed to overhear this. In fact, I'm about 99% that I wasn’t, but Janine came by while Sarah was in here. They were being really cryptic, but…Five...well, there's no point in skirting around it. You're either going to tell me or give me some I'm-not-at-liberty-to-say answer. Are you in the Order?”

Cat owl’s out of the bag then.

“Technically, that is top secret information. Or was. Before everything happened. I’m not really sure it is now, but I’d still appreciate it if you kept this quiet. I trust you, but I’m just obligated to say it.” It was true enough; Maxine had probably been one of Runner Five’s biggest allies since she’d ended up at Abel. “It’s just that when people figure out I’m partially responsible for the Avatar’s well-being, they start asking too many questions. Things I can’t answer and things I don’t really want to answer. 'Where is she?' 'Why hasn't this been fixed yet?' 'Has she made contact with the Spirit World?' The usual.”

“So that’s still your job? Looking out for the Avatar? Even now?” Her pen taps faster as Five makes her best attempt at a shrug while still laying down.

“I guess so. I can’t stop looking out for our only hope even after the world ends. I can't just quit. Even though I’ve never actually met her myself. I worked behind the scenes mostly, and after Ba Sing Se fell, we lost track of her. Word has it that she made it out of the city with some guards, but I’ve completely lost contact with the White Lotus since that day. There’s no real way of knowing. I’ve still been looking for her, of course. I thought to ask Sam and maybe Jack and Eugene if they could possibly get in contact with anyone and set up a network, but I figured I’d wait until people stopped staring at me like I was going to stab them in the back the minute they turned around. Plus, it's still really unclear how discreet I need to be about the information I do have. Which is very little, by the way. Anyway, you’d figure at least another member of the Order would have turned up at Mullins, but I’m not any closer to finding one of them or the Avatar than I was on day one of this mess. Not unless your Alice was _the_ Alice, but I doubt one of these shamblers could take out the Avatar.” Five exhales, staring at shadows of the lantern flames dancing on the top of the tent from her placement on the cot. The pen ceases in its feverish tapping. Silence. Okay, probably not the best thing to say after the woman had just died. “Sorry, sorry. I apologize. That was insensitive. I didn't mean it like that."

Silence still.

Five lurches up from her position on the cot, scanning Maxine’s face…which is now drained of color as she stares blankly back at Five. Maxine turns to glance behind her at the tent entrance then quickly snaps her head back to Five. She rises speedily to the open tent flap and begins tying it tightly shut with trembling fingers.

“Dr. Myers?" The runner plays back everything she's said in her mind, looking for something to provoke this response in the normally cool, calm, collected waterbender. Maxine already knew she was Lotus, so that shouldn't surprise her, and she didn't get the impression that she was that close to Alice, but -- _shit_. Five clamps her hand over her mouth, shaking her head frantically, eyes wide. Nope. Not possible.

Maxine places herself directly next to Five on the cot and begins whispering in a harsh tone. “That’s what all of us thought too about the Avatar being immune to this... _disease._ All of us. That’s the only reason the Major agreed to letting her be a runner. Alice wanted to pull her weight around Abel and have the opportunity to go out and look for answers. Solutions to this. And it got her killed. We can’t have everyone knowing, and I could get in serious hot water for letting this slip -- I mean, you were going to puzzle it out eventually, though. No point in trying to hide it from you now, but if word got out that Abel had the Avatar and that we don’t anymore, you of all people know how everyone would panic.”

Five was the one panicking right now. The thought that the old Avatar was dead and the new Avatar was busy off being an infant somewhere was overwhelming to say the least. The only thing most people had seemed to puzzle out was that this whole Grey Plague was somehow tied back to the Spirit World, and now their only connection with it was severed. What hope did they have left of turning this around? Suddenly her interactions with the people of Able Township were making a hell of a lot more sense. The suspicion, the secrecy, the unwillingness to accept that the old Runner Five was gone.... She was beginning to realize just what a miracle it had been that Sam hadn’t completely lost his mind over this and destroyed the entire township in a freak windstorm or something. Five couldn’t process how anyone at Abel stayed sane sitting on this information. It terrified her.

“Maxine,” she begins in a low and shaky voice, wondering if sharing this kind of secret with someone automatically meant you were on a first-name basis. Might as well be. “What you’re saying to me right now is that the Avatar is dead, and you few here at Abel are the only people in the entire world with this information. However, you've done nothing about it."

“Exactly right. We haven’t done anything at _all_.” At this point Maxine gets a little snippy, unappreciative of the how-dare-you-why-aren’t-you-thinking-of-the-rest-of-us tone Five has taken. She folds her arms. “Listen, Five, we’ve been trying to figure out how to take care of this since it happened. We know what a crucial piece of information this is. Believe. Me. And, you know, if any of us happen to forget, Sam will be there to remind us. He at least is painfully aware of our little situation, I promise. He’s trying to continue Alice’s work, and I was hoping… _we_ were hoping that you might be able to help us with that. Especially since now I know it was your job in the first place.”

“No, I’m sorry." She backpedals, scrunching up her face and shaking her head again. "I do want to help. Really. Not just because it’s my job but because I know it’s important to everyone, but I don't even know how I can help besides what I'm already doing as a runner. I don't know where we're at in the process of trying to fix things. Or if it can be fixed. Or even what needs to be fixed for that matter. Or, you know, what that process would entail in the first place. I mean, did Alice even manage to puzzle anything else out about this whole plague thing?”

“Alice wasn’t exactly a fully realized Avatar yet.” Maxine sighs. “Her main problem was with airbending. Taking after Avatar Korra, I suppose. She just couldn’t make a solid connection with the Spirit World. Sam was trying to help her. I don’t know how far she’d really improved, and I never asked him after it all fell to pieces. They would send her out looking for scrolls or anything we might be able to glean information out of until she was able to make the connection. We were hoping she might be able to make it on the next solstice.”

Five felt like crying. The solstice wasn’t going to be any help when their bridge to the Spirit World was missing. Talk about lost causes. What a day this turned out to be. "I still don't know where that leaves us. We can’t do this on our own."

"I know, Five. It's going to have to be a group effort. Let’s just start small."

"So who would you trust with this, Maxine?"

"Well," she pauses for a while, casting her eyes upward as she contemplates her options. "You, me, and Sam for starters. Eugene was supposed to help Alice with practicing and perfecting her firebending when he’d healed up from the accident. Reluctantly, though. I don't know how, but Jack finally talked him into it. Plus, they're good friends with Sam. They're a safe bet, and if you still want to get in contact with other White Lotus members, we'll probably need them. That's got us Air, Water, Fire, Sword, and I suppose a White Lotus in place of our Fan. Guess we'll be needing an Earthbender to follow the formula." Maxine laughs.

"No, that's a bad idea." Five tries to conceal the fear that's crept into her voice, but she thinks it's somewhat unsuccessful. "Sarah's still contemplating how to kill me at the moment. She doesn't have time to complete our Avatar-less Team Avatar."

"No, stop that. It's just that she and Alice worked well together, for obvious...earthbender-ish reasons. Sarah is probably still just reluctant to accept a new running partner, and she's particularly cautious of new members of Abel. Especially considering the mysterious circumstances under which you came to join us here. Give it time. We may need her eventually. Not to mention the fact that if Janine knows then Sarah might get the information off of her at some point, and we're definitely going to need Janine. Maybe not now. Maybe not at first, but it is her home. It'll be hard to do anything without her finding out."

Five nods. "So is this the part where we go forth and save the world and ride off into the sunset?"

"Always the optimist!" Maxine grins. "Stranger things have happened, y'know. 12-year-olds saving the world, zombies apocalypses, etcetera."

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start. Team Avatar indeed.


End file.
